Running a mile from the rolling thunder of Fay Weldon

Men have gone shopping for the feminine and, typically, have come back with the wrong products

IT'S A fairly reliable rule of intellectual life that once you find yourself occupying the same hillock of moral high ground as Fay Weldon, it's time to move on.

When Fay pronounced upon the rights of women, the rest of us became post- feminist. Her attack on shrinks convinced us it was time to try therapy. So when, a few months back, she announced that men were deeply misunderstood, that everyone should stop being mean to them and give them a job and a sex life and a reason for living, there was clearly no alternative but to go over to the other side.

Shame about that. For a year or so, I had been telling female friends that they should give men a second chance, that the new emotional incontinence might even turn out to be a positive thing. I had been in favour of educational discrimination to give boys a chance against the new generation of heartless, noisy, overconfident teenage girls. There was even a case, I had argued, for a university scheme to reward any male undergraduate able to finish a course, with an automatic 10 per cent character bonus when his Finals were marked.

But once Fay came thundering up the hill, shouting the odds about male inadequacy, it was clear what would happen. Already enfeebled by idleness and cowed by their more successful sisters and girlfriends, men began to feel that it was their right to be hopeless, that to sit at home tearfully watching Noel's House Party was somehow fashionable.

Now the collapse of the male is complete. Newspaper columns, full of former blokes complaining how difficult it all is, have become a ghastly circle jerk of misery and self-pity.

Here Bill Buford confesses to attending a "How to Seduce a Woman" seminar at the Learning Annex in New York; there, Tim Adams, last seen being expelled from a book launch by Will Self - one of the few real men left in London - devotes an ironic, self-mocking column to men and failure.

Worse, a new genre of fiction, consisting of youngish men complaining about not being able to keep a girlfriend, is about to reach the bookshops. The new king of the saddoes, Mike Gayle has explained that the inspiration behind his novel My Legendary Girlfriend was the agony of being a vulnerable New Man. "We're the first generation not to see women through our father's eyes," he sobbed in The Guardian.

And it's not just young men who are wetting themselves with terror of women, commitment and life. An organisation called Tomorrow Research International, having run a survey across 46 countries, has revealed that, in the words of a Canadian interviewee, "We have a lot of guys wandering round wondering just what the heck they're supposed to be and how they're supposed to act."

It's not the vulnerability that gets me. Speaking as one so profoundly in touch with his female side that I have to restrain myself from waxing my legs, doing pelvic floor exercises or taking advantage of some remarkable bargains in the summer hat sale at Harvey Nicks, I'd be the last person to knock feminisation.

But, in their generalised state of panic and anxiety, men have gone shopping for the feminine and, typically, have come back with the wrong products.

Instead of usefully learning how to make a bed, rustle up something nice when there's nothing in the fridge or boost your partner's self-worth without being patronising, they have discovered tears, pre-menstrual tension (which ,in the male version, lasts all month) and not paying the bill in restaurants.

The result is there for all to see: a plummeting international sperm count and startling new privileges for the few men who behave in the traditional manner.

The sky-high approval rating for Bill Clinton, for example, has nothing to do with the economy; Americans are simply relieved to find at least one male prepared to enjoy a swift, inappropriate, essentially non-sexual relationship with a young member of staff. A new man offered the same opportunity would still be agonising about ethics, consequences, Monica's right to equal pleasure, the risk of her suffering housemaid's knee and so on.

Where does the Blair government stand on the new crisis for men? Obviously it has some way to go before male ministers enjoy a Clintonesque level of self-confidence, but there was good news in the recent report that Tony and his young guns unwind at the end of the day with a game of five- a-side football from which all women, even Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett, are barred. It's not much, but it's a start.